The Ceremonial Hall

This guide to the Ceremonial Hall in Prague traces the Chevra Kadisha, the burial brotherhood a local rabbi founded in 1564 to prepare the Jewish community's dead, with its rulebook written by his neighbor Rabbi Judah Loew. It follows the brotherhood's work into the hall itself, raised beside the Old Jewish Cemetery in the early twentieth century to house a morgue and the room where members performed the most intimate rite in Jewish life. Listen for how an ordinary Prague guild became the model copied by burial societies across Europe and beyond.